A lot of the times when I'm browsing through articles, I'll find one that has like twelve crosslinks to twelve seperate storylines, each storyline having two universes inside it, etc, and it seems like I'd need to devote the next 4 hours to reading in order to see everything. How deep do you usually delve when you're going through that kinda stuff? I know I'm guilty in the past of just taking one look at all the crap linked to it and resigning myself to not really knowing what the hell is going on. I know that there's probably only a couple things that you need to read to get a general grasp of an article, but it can be difficult to tell what's important and what isn't.

I remember one time I took an article - I think it was the policy about letting family members of deceased operatives know about the foundation - and went through like every single crosslink there and tried to keep going until stuff got completely unrelated. I ended up reading through like 10 articles of twisted pines and three portlands stuff.

So how do you guys usually read stuff like that? I'm curious if im the only one that does this sort of thing.

if an SCP crosslinks to another SCP or a tale, if i look at them at all i typically only read the SCP or tale it crosslinks to, regardless of whether its part of a longer series of tales or not, because like you said otherwise i'd be there for like 4 hours. typically the SCP or tale crosslinked is the only thing relevant to the other article and it isn't necessary to read the entire canon hub or whatever.

sometimes tho, stuff catches my attention and im like "oh this is actually pretty interesting" and i willingly devote a few hours to reading the whole canon hub and all that stuff.

It's a judgment call. Someone's I'll fully read it if it seems important to understanding the current SCP, and a lot of the time I'll read it or leave it open in a new tab if it seems interesting on its own. Often I'll just close them.